That’s right, the GOP Administration is working on jamming through before the next Congress is seated in January a capital gains tax cut of which almost 90 % of the benefits would go to the top 1 % in income. Remember it is this same 1 % who received 80 % of the benefits in the Tax Cut bill Congress passed last winter. We now have a deficit over the next 10 years added by that Tax Cut bill of $1.5 trillion. The federal government faces the largest deficit since the 2008 Great Recession and will be issuing nearly $800 billion in bond financing to make up the difference in the 2nd half of this year.

We have the lowest level of corporate tax receipts in 75 years, and the tax level on the top 1 % is the lowest in history. We don’t need to be giving the wealthy another tax cut, we know that trickle-down economics never worked.

Sources: World Inequality Database, The Washington Post – 7/31/18

What has really happened since the Reagan years is that tax policy, deductions, asset inflation, executive stock compensation deductions and other financial gimmicks has amounted to a ‘tsunami up’ phenomenon. Actually, our country has the highest level of concentration of wealth in the top 1 % since 1929. Remember from your history books, what happened after 1929 and the Smoot – Hawley trade wars? The Great Depression.

The real priority for our federal government is to Make America a Democracy Again (our post on the political power of the 1%), focusing on how to create basic economic opportunities for all; access to high quality healthcare, reducing student debt, investing in higher education and apprenticeship programs, welcoming immigrants to build our labor force, and investing in our Heartland to bring rural regions of the country into the economic mainstream.